Finding the life we want by embracing minimalism isn’t about giving up everything. Nor is it about holding on to everything and just trying to organize it better. Instead, it’s about reducing the number of our possessions to a level that sets us free.
Minimalism isn’t about owning less just for the sake of owning less. It’s about owning just the right amount of anything (and everything).
I have always found it important that the wisdom of the ages agree on the value of this approach to living. And the value of this approach to living may be as important today as ever.
12 years ago, when my wife and I began minimizing our home and removing the nonessentials, I would often remark to her, “This is fantastic. Owning less stuff is so freeing! I wonder why nobody ever told me about this before?”
Before long, though, I started to catch myself. Was it really that nobody had ever told me about minimalism before? Or was it that I just wasn’t listening?
In my head, I began recounting the mentors I had heard who spoke about the spiritual dangers of materialism. And beyond that, throughout my life, I had read and heard dozens of challenges to reject the empty promises of consumerism and follow a way based on higher values, not to mention all the financial advice about not overspending your means.
I began to do research and discovered that minimalism is not a new movement at all. Whether specifically labeled as minimalism or not, it has been practiced and encouraged for thousands of years—since well before our current society of mass-produced goods, well before suburbanization, and even well before the Industrial Revolution.
Under all kinds of economic conditions, minimalism has been promoted as a rewarding way of life. In good times and bad, people have encouraged the pursuit of minimalism.
Today, we recognize some of the people in recent centuries who have encouraged this approach to life, including Henry David Thoreau and John Ruskin. I even hear them referred to as the “fathers of the minimalist movement.” But minimalism predates all of them—by a long shot. The minimalist lifestyle may be gaining in popularity today, but it is the furthest thing from new.
Duane Elgin, who is often credited with bringing the phrase voluntary simplicity into the public discourse, said it to me like this: “I tell people that I’m the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of this movement that got started a couple of thousand years ago with the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, and other great sages who understood the value of simplicity. What is new is not the value of simplicity but rather the conditions of the world where it is understood.”
Living with less has always been freeing and life giving, filling people with hope and purpose. It has enabled human beings to expand in spirit and to live as more than mere accumulators of possessions. And therefore, minimalism is not a brand-new approach to life invented as a response to our overproduction of consumer goods. Quite the contrary. Our most trusted moral leaders have promoted it for centuries.
It is a historically important movement. And it is as important today as it’s ever been.
Tina says
My daughter made cards and scrapbooks years ago. Meanwhile, my husband got rid of some astronomy stuff. I told her she could have a toolbox for each hobby. Since she moved in with us, she got rid of some stamps she had not used in ten years. She got rid of duplicates of pens and other supplies. Then she went through her boxes of photos. Since we are Jews, we know our ancestors lived in tents and followed their herds. We often moved with only what we could carry. Who needs a garage or rented storage space? We make donations to charity. Other folks can build pyramids.
Dr B says
It all started decades ago for me as I came across the More with Less cookbook. That, of course, lead to the Living More with Less book.
Living an unencumbered life is the admission ticket to the beginnings of wisdom.
Judy Brandon says
Ghandi. I. have in my mind a picture of him in a cloth, sandals and eyeglasses. Preaching peace.
Now that’s really minimalism.
TJ says
My in-laws went into a memory care facility at the end of February. My husband and I have been sorting and de-cluttering their house that they have lived in for the last 41 years.
Imagine: Five bedrooms, kitchen, formal living room, formal dining room, family room, office, three bathrooms, two car garage (cars will not fit), basement, walk-in attic. Every closet is packed full. Every drawer is packed full. Every room is full.
Someone will have to go through all of our stuff. And sometimes a person gets to the point health wise that they are not able to minimize their own stuff. That is something that is not always considered when we put off doing the minimizing.
SOMEONE will have to do it at some point.
kris says
Going through the same thing, as my 93 yr old MIL moved into assisted, finally. We have hauled at least 2 dozen large hefty bags of just clothing out to goodwill, thrift, Habitat, etc. For 1 person. My FIL has been dead 6 yrs, all his things still there. 60 yrs in the house-packed to the rafters. Doing all we can to try and keep stuff out of a landfill- giving away, selling, passing on. Many months of work left.
John says
“Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Discovering minimalism and simplifying my life have contributed greatly to my health and sense of well-being!